I did not bite the head off that chicken.
Popular Mechanics has sorted through the various presidential candidates web sites for information on their stance on various science-relevant issues (and on gun control…how that ended up in their matrix is a mystery, and I presume there is just some gun fanatic on their staff). They have produced a
table listing various science issues for each candidate with check marks indicating whether they have declared anything on the subject. You can’t get their positions from the table — a check just means there is more information available — and you have to click through each to figure out what they’re saying.
Right away you’ll notice that pretty much everyone is ignoring space technology (sorry, Phil). The Republicans have little interest in science education, and when you click through, they’re usually just mouthing platitudes, like “encourage students to pursue science careers”. The Democrats are much, much better — they make more points and offer some specifics. Clinton wants to restore the OTA and improve the science advisor’s access, as does Edwards; Edwards also want to increase NIH and NSF funding and remove research restrictions, and invest more in teacher training and pay. Obama wants to double research funding. Richardson wants to hire and train 100,000 new math and science teachers.
Anyway, it’s a useful guide to what the politicians say they want to do, and gives a peek into their priorities. It looks like if you’re pro-science, you ought to be a Democrat; if you’re pro-gun, you need to vote Republican, or for John Edwards.
Not so mysterious when you remember ubergeek Eric S. Raymond.
Somewhat off-topic, but apparently the newly-elected leader of Britain’s third-largest political party is an atheist.
actually, pro-gun democrats would be better advised to vote Richardson. he won’t win the presidency any more than Edwards will, but it’d have a better chance of bringing that particular message across, i would think.
What if your pro-science, science education, and scientific research (including space) AND pro-gun?
[whine]
Who is the candidate for meeee?
[/whine]
It is kinda like choosing the party which is less likely to trample over the Bill of Rights(TM) As of late the Republicans have had the worst record.
-DU-
The gun control bit is expected from this magazine (which by the way is filled with excellent Y-chromosome gift suggestions this time of year!)
I found the results predictable but useful, and I threw my own two cents in as well.
Oh, and PZ, I’m pretty sure I saw you bite the head off a chicken once. Maybe it wasn’t a chicken…
I feel warm and fuzzy after reading Clinton’s Edwards’ and Obama’s science policies. I especially like Obama’s doubling of funding on research.
There’s little doubt that any Democrat would be superior to any Republican on science.
I’ve taken two of those “Find Your Candidate” questionnaires, and in both cases, the candidate I most appear to agree with is Kucinich.
Why is he not on this Geek vote thing?
For me, the “mainstream” candidate choices are like:
1) I would rather be kicked in the head.
2) I would rather be kicked in the belly.
It was a baby chicken.
It was a baby chicken.
I don’t think it should be “pro gun.” It’s more like “pro automatic assult weapons for everyone – criminals and children included” (PAAWFECACI). New legislation at the PA state level would limit handgun purchaces to one per month and mandate reporting if your guns are lost or stolen. Apparently, the PAAWFECACI group would prefer if the police couldn’t know whether the person who went on the shooting spree stole the 8 handguns you purchaced last month or borrowed them.
Sorry for the double post, but I got this after my first try:
Which is odd, since I hadn’t commented at all today, and I’m not sure I commented yesterday either.
The gun control thing recognizes their audience. By talking about “amazing new assault rifle technology” the magazine can please their fan base (nerd wannabes) while drawing in new readers (gun nuts).
Gun technology is often featured prominently.
I can say that Paul just looks like a giant hole on this chart.
When did Dodd drop out of the race?
If you’re “pro-gun” you don’t really need to worry about any of the candidates listed here. I know that’s not what the NRA says (I use to be a member), but they’ve got to keep their membership up and keep selling magazines somehow. Fear’s the easiest way.
There’s no way that gun owner’s rights will ever be infringed upon to an extent that hunters and law abiding folk won’t be able to go buy a rifle, etc. Now if you feel like everyone should be able to keep a concealed mac-10 on them at all times, yeah, you should probably go with the pro-gun guy. Most of us, however, don’t think that way.
Accepting the NRA’s propaganda is almost as bad as accepting the church’s propaganda on same-sex marriage. Both are nothing more than fear mongering.
please do maintain that somebody, anybody, out there would ever actually support such blatantly lunatic nonsense. nobody does, nobody ever has, and pretending otherwise serves admirably to discredit your own position even further.
it’s just a pity that one of the slogans that’s being discredited by association is “sensible gun control”. everybody supports that in actual reality, of course — the NRA consistently helps write and enact such laws — but through mud-flinging moral-panic politics those words have become a catchphrase synonymous in U.S. politics with a hysterical “ban them all RIGHT NOW it’s FOR THE CHILDREN” overreaction. as a result, we no longer have a good label to describe what actually is “sensible gun control”. shame, that.
Nomen Nescio:
I realize that PAAWFECACI is an exageration, but please tell me what’s so unreasonable about limiting handgun purchaces to one per month and requiring the reporting of lost or stolen guns.
Seriously. Why leave out Dodd? Bastards.
This is off topic, although not more off topic than gun control stuff, but I’m disgusted with the state of science in this country. Apparently funding for Fermilab is going to get cut and they may have to shut down for over a month so Dick Durbin can get points (that he’ll never really get) with the mouth breathing Fox crowd. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!
Nomen, you say:
“”sensible gun control”. everybody supports that in actual reality, of course ”
Right, which is why there is no real threat to gun owners rights to have and attain guns. The majority of Americans by far wants good gun laws and for them to be enforced properly. They also are not in favor of taking away guns from law abiding citizens. So…beyond so admirable classes on gun safety that the NRA has, what exactly are they doing that’s positive? Not much. They just make a lot of noise (and money) and work to get conservative republicans elected. Not very impressive.
This is off topic, although not more off topic than gun control stuff, but I’m disgusted with the state of science in this country. Apparently funding for Fermilab is going to get cut and they may have to shut down for over a month so Dick Durbin can get points (that he’ll never really get) with the mouth breathing Fox crowd. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!
Hmmm, how did that get posted twice? Sorry!
Jackal, without delving into why limiting gun sales to one per month is unreasonable, I would like to ask why you think it would help? I can’t imagine that someone who decides on a whim to purchase a gun to do violence will be deterred by a law limiting his purchase to one gun. One is all it takes, right?
As for lost or stolen guns, is there a real problem with this? I haven’t heard of it, if there is. If I ever had anything stolen from me, whether it was a CD player, tools, or a firearm, the first thing I would do would be report it to the police.
it’s not unreasonable to ration handguns (that’s what X purchases per Y time-unit laws are, after all), especially not if collectors have some sort of loophole to purchase matched sets of antiques through. and most responsible firearms owners already report lost or stolen guns, that too only makes sense.
the unreasonable part is to enact such laws under a pretense that they will reduce crime or make us safer when there’s no logical reason to believe they’ll do any such thing. plus they both help paint gun control advocates as hysterical extremists.
(hand)gun rationing can be easily scare-mongered as the thin edge of the wedge; once that’s enacted, just increase the length of the time-unit until it effectively reads “lifetime”. that’s a losing proposition politically, even if such scare-mongering has no basis in fact, and the rationing will still not make us any safer.
obliging gun owners, by law, to report losses paints them as somehow at fault if their property gets stolen; as if their merely owning such property was somehow suspect, such that they might be held liable for a crime committed against them. lots of people find the implication insulting and patronizing, no matter how little that implication has to do with the truth — and such laws can be used to enable official persecution, by means of prosecuting people for not reporting a loss “quickly enough” or not having taken “sufficient” measures to prevent theft, and forcing the victim to defend their actions in court at their expense and peril. even if that was never meant to happen, even if it never does happen, the very fear of the possibility will poison the political discourse to some extent.
passing laws that will not improve public safety, under the pretense that they somehow will, while knowing that they will make life harder for people who have broken no laws and made society no worse off, is politically odious to me. that’s why i personally oppose these particular proposals.
Pro gun or pro constitution I suppose…
Oh, look, another thread derailed into a shouting match on gun control. Anyone want to talk about science stances and the candidates? No?
I can’t help but notice the complete lack of Mitt Romney on the chart. As a candidate getting so much attention you’d think they’d have him on there. Oh… wait… that’s right, as a Mormon, I’m sure that science is one of the things his magical underwear protects him from.
Carlie, I kind of did. Durbin is running for reelection in 2008. You’re right though, this will probably degrade into a shouting match between two or three people about how the other one has the lesser skills in debate and logic. Oh well…
Nomen
“obliging gun owners, by law, to report losses paints them as somehow at fault if their property gets stolen; as if their merely owning such property was somehow suspect”
No, it’s just sane law. If you had radioactive material or dangerous drugs stolen from you while you were working at a university and didn’t report their loss, you’d be in a lot of hot water. Not because you are somehow suspect, but because it’s for the good of the people around you, for society, to have this information available. It’s helpful to law inforcement to know what’s actually out there. If a supplier had a large shipment of fertilizer stolen, I think it would be best if the feds knew this. It’s got nothing to do with the owner being “somehow suspect”. It has everything to do with giving the government the information needed to try to protect us from another McVeigh.
Carlie, I wish that people would talk about science and the candidates. Unfortunately, the few positive science remarks I’ve heard from any of them are bland ‘ya I think science is good’ type. Social issues are trumping good science this election season, and with every viable candidate pandering to the theists, I doubt we will see any hard legislation protecting, or promoting science for at least the next 4 years. With any luck, I’m hopping to see improvements in health care, a draw down in Iraq, and a diplomatic effort to show we don’t care which gods people want to worship, as long as we can sell McDonald’s and Nikes to all the kids in their country. (read Mcworld vs Jihad for a great way to secularize the planet. Unfortunately, it involves fast food and consumerism)
Dahan, I would definatly report any of those items being stolen. But do we currently have a law [u]requiring[/u] stolen fertilizer to be reported? If so, I haven’t heard of it. Is it a Federal law, or State law?
Bart,
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regulates fertilizer under the ATF requires those liscenced to have large amounts of fertilizer to report the loss or stealing of such. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) requires the report of the loss of or stealing of nuclear materials. Both are federal agencies. Both are federal laws.
If you support these sort of laws, in only makes sense to do so with things like firearms.
Should have said the BATF USES the ATF to regulate and enforce that law. Sorry about that.
Training 100,000 science teachers could be a complete waste of resources. Bringing in teachers isn’t enough; they need to be sufficiently competent as well.
I’m not convinced that an arbitrary science teacher is fit to teach science. Bad teaching of science is arguably even worse than no teaching at all, for it can demean the excitement of science to tedious rote memorization, and so turn many intelligent students away. Let’s also not forget that now that we have the Internet, the importance of the teacher (yes, even the skilled teacher) is diminishing more and more.
(I’m not trying to praise or condemn any candidate by saying this.)
Or whatever…I get all that crap confused. I'[ll post the link to read if you wish though.
>When did Dodd drop out of the race?
When he got too busy defending the actual Constitution (by opposing full retroactive immunity for telecom companies). Sigh.
Dahan, you’re comparing regular firearms with large amounts of radioactives and bomb-making ingredients. this comparison is borderline asinine; by your equating them, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion you somehow think they are of equal risk and concern, which would be ridiculous.
(plus, the BATF is the ATF. the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — not a convenience store! — has changed acronym a number of times in recent memory. but that’s a nitpick.)
Thank you Dahan. Good info. The only true good is knowledge, the only evil, Ignorance. Best fortune cookie I ever received. I’m going to have to dig into it further now. I’m curious what the cut off limit is for ‘large quantities’ It’s also odd that they require it, as I can’t imagine anyone not reporting a huge theft like that. Unless they were part of the plot. Then I couldn’t imagine them actually reporting it.
Nomen, of course it would be assinine for me to say that they are of equal risk. Never did, never would. Although if you really wanted to you could compare the number of people killed in America each year with handguns vs those by bobmbings and it would be easy to decide that firearms are a bigger threat to us. I’m not doing that however. What I’m saying is that it is the governments business when dangerous things go missing. The more dangerous it is, the more they should, and do care. While a handgun is not nearly as dangerous as a 55 gallon drum of nitrate laden fertilizer with a blasting cap attached, it doesn’t mean that we should shrug our shoulders and say “Well, at least they can only shoot people instead of blowing them up.”
Guns are dangerous. Anyone who’s used one (I use to teach on the rifle range when I was in the Corps) knows that. That’s why many people want them. OK, so with the power to have one comes some stipulations. My argument is that it isn’t to much to ask to notify the proper authorities when a gun is lost or stolen. Just common sense. You want a car, a thing that kills more than guns, bombs or damn near anything else in America, you have to follow a lot of regulations, including letting the authorities know when it’s been stolen. This is no different.
Limit? To? One per month?
Am I misparsing this sentence, or what?
I mean, who buys twelve guns a year?!?
Limit? To? One per month?
Am I misparsing this sentence, or what?
I mean, who buys twelve guns a year?!?
I think ‘train and hire’ might be better than ‘hire and train’.
P.S.: I think the idea behind limiting gun purchaces to one per month was to make it harder to run a business of buying guns leagaly and then selling them on the black market.
Regarding the reporting lost/stolen guns, I think it went along like this: If someone shoots someone with a gun I’ve reported lost/stolen, I’m unlikely to be accountable, whereas if I loan someone a gun and they shoot someone, I could be partially accountable.
Bart, Just so you don’t have to dig to hard…
“Title 18 U.S.C. 844(p). Title 18 U.S.C. 844(p) discusses
the theft reporting requirement. It states “(1) In general.
A holder of a license or permit who knows that explosive
materials have been stolen from that licensee or
permittee, shall report the theft to the Attorney General
not later than 24 hours after the discovery of the theft.
(2) Penalty. A holder of a license or permit who does not
report a theft in accordance with paragraph (1), shall be
fined not more than $10,000, imprisoned not more than
5 years, or both.””
And this is the document that talks about ammonium nitrate being included on the ATF’s list of high explosives:
http://insct.syr.edu/Research/Publications/Student%20Research/Student%20Papers/Summer%202005/Legal%20Controls%20on%20Explosive%20Materials.pdf
Don’t know how much you need to have though.
Your fortune cookies better than any I’ve gotten, except it doesn’t work well when you add “in bed” to it.
yes, but by that measure, automobiles would be a greater threat still than the both of them put together. if it’s really the government’s business when “dangerous” things go missing, you have to specify how dangerous is too dangerous, and why — because anything can be dangerous, in this world.
i don’t know, and so long as they don’t do anything illegal or blatantly irresponsible with them, i really don’t care. such people might be worth flagging for a quiet investigation to see if there’s any sign they’re selling guns illegally, but i see no reason why mere large purchases should warrant more than that. in and of itself, such purchasing would be a form of (perhaps not so) conspicuous consumption, nothing more.
(i’ve become very thoroughly americanized, i notice. only been here nine years, but i’m already suppressing the urge to yell “because it’s a free country, you pick-an-epithet!” at europeans. woe is me.)
Nomen,
“yes, but by that measure, automobiles would be a greater threat still than the both of them put together. if it’s really the government’s business when “dangerous” things go missing, you have to specify how dangerous is too dangerous, and why — because anything can be dangerous, in this world.”
Exactly, which is why I said I was not making that argument. Yes, anything can be dangerous in this world, but guns only have one purpose. Cars, swimming pools, fertilizer, all those things that kill more than guns, have many purposes. Guns don’t. They are designed to kill. That’s why it becomes something the government needs to pay attention to. You could steal a gun so that you could sell it to someone and make money, but that’s kinda cyclical. I mean, why is the next person buying it, right?
Look, the whole thing boils down to the fact that guns, like religion have a very special, sacred place in American society. They don’t deserve that. What other manufacturer can’t be sued besides gun makers? I personally don’t think that gun manufacturers should be found guilty of any crime just because of what they make, but the fact that you CAN’T sue them? Come on. If we go ahead and accept that the second amendment really does mean for us all to be able to bear arms. Fine. But it doesn’t say anything about Congress “passing no law” regarding them.
There is a deep-set paranoia in many gun owners, put there by the NRA and similar, that any law governing guns is just the beginning of the slippery slope to the US banning guns. That is patently ridiculous.
yup. punching holes in paper. that’s the one and only thing Olympic Free Pistols are designed to do.
the S&W 460 revolver is designed for hunting, and nothing else. the S&W 500 Magnum, as far as i can tell, is designed for no other purpose but bragging rights and penile substitution. (same thing with the Desert Eagle .50AE, for that matter.) shall i get started listing all the shotguns out there designed specifically to break clay discs in this particular manner as opposed to that one, or vice versa?
really, this claim has always been silly; it would be far easier to substantiate if it were made against swimming pools.
(ironically, those firearms that really are designed largely with killing in mind tend to be among the most versatile designs, most easily adapted to any number of very different purposes. people who kill for a living seem to like a kind of generalism, for whatever reason.)
but what does it matter, anyway? the intent of a designer does not dictate nor predestine the effect on society of the things designed. i’d prefer laws made for more pragmatic reasons than “well, but this was MEANT to do THAT”.
FYI, gun manufacturers most certainly can be sued, if you have been genuinely injured through some genuine negligence on their part. what you can no longer do is file nuisance lawsuits designed to shut them down, and that only had to be illegalized because a goodly number of litigants were expressly trying to do just that, and doing quite well at it. the weapons manufacturing industry really isn’t a big one, in this country.
(unfortunately, thomas.loc.gov does not return reusable URL’s to anything interesting. search for S.397 in the 109th congress. the bill is surprisingly readable and manageably short.)
Spare me the pontification. You can continue to argue fine points of law such as the one about when a gun maker can actually be sued, or that there are some guns that are made for purposes other than killing, (geeze man, I know, like I said I taught shooting, I have a close friend who shot air guns at the national level, I’ve owned guns before, hunted, blah blah blah) but that does nothing to further your side of the debate concerning whether or not gun owners should be required to inform the authorities if they have a weapon stolen.
I’m not anti-gun, but I am anti knee-jerk reactionary folk who are afraid of every law that pertains to what can only be called an almost religious belief to them (gun ownership, obviously).